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Variable codebook for "The Path of Law: Legal Uncertainty and Issues of First Impression in the U.S. Courts of Appeals," American Political Science Review
Anthony R. Taboni, ataboni@princeton.edu
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*** Variables:

### Issue
- **Description**: Identifier for the issue of first impression addressed by the court. The file 'Liberal_Disposition_Coding.xlsx' provides a text description of the issue
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### Citation
- **Description**: Case identifier
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### Circuit
- **Description**: Variable identifying the geographic circuit that decided the case. Decisions from the Federal Circuit are excluded
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### Position
- **Description**: Binary variable indicating the panel took on the question of first impression. In combination with `Liberal_Dispositon_Coding.xlsx` this variable determines Liberal.
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### Judge 1
- **Description**: Identifier for the first listed judge overseeing the case; for en banc cases this variable is not defined 
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### Judge 2
- **Description**: Identifier for the second listed judge overseeing the case; for en banc cases this variable is not defined 
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### Judge 3
- **Description**: Identifier for the third listed judge overseeing the case. For en banc cases this variable is not defined. In a subset of cases, fewer than three judges were present so this variable is undefined
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### Publication Year
- **Description**: Count variable indicating the year in which the opinion was published.
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### Median Ideology
- **Description**: Median Judicial Common Space (JCS) score of judges sitting on the panel that decided the issue. JCS scores for Court of Appeals and Supreme Court judges are from "Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, Jeffrey A. Segal, and Chad Westerland, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 23: 303-325 (2007)." JCS scores for district court judges are from "Boyd, Christina L. 2015. “Federal District Court Judge Ideology Data." If a Supreme Court justice previously served on the US Courts of Appeals, their score from the appellate courts is used. Otherwise, I take the mean of their JCS score from their time on the Supreme Court.
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### En Banc
- **Description**: Binary indicator for whether the decision was made by the circuit en banc
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### Liberal
- **Description**: Binary indicator for whether the court took the liberal position in the case. The variable is equal to 1 if the position taken by the court was coded as the liberal position. Information about the liberal position can be found in "Liberal_Disposition_Coding.xlsx"
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### Occurrence
- **Description**: Count variable of when in the sequence of decisions on an issue of first a court acted. If two courts moved in the same year, I look up the date that the opinion was published
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